Week 10 Discussion — Is That a Cause or a Coincidence? — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Hook

Warnings about chains of consequences and claims that one habit leads to a result are everywhere, from a coach's pregame ritual to a health headline. Some of them are backed link by link and some are not, and in a real case the line is hard to draw, which is why the course keys only clear passages and leaves cases like these to discussion.

Your discussion question — choose Option A or Option B; they carry the same weight and the same rubric, and you say which you picked.

Option A: The running question asks whether the campus library should stay open around the clock during finals week (illustrative). Its strongest objection says that overnight hours encourage all-night studying, and losing sleep can hurt exam performance, so the library would be helping students harm themselves. Read that objection as a causal chain: list its links in order, say which link carries the most weight and what evidence would back it, and argue whether it is a reasonable slope, an unsupported one, or somewhere in between. You are judging the chain, not whether the library should stay open.

Option B: Choose one claim from your own life that one thing causes another: an ad, a coach's or a friend's ritual, a product review, a workplace rule of thumb, or a health headline (no politicians, parties, campaigns, election polls, or news outlets, and no one's real name). Name the pattern behind it, check it against the three rivals (a confounding factor, reverse causation, and coincidence), and say what comparison would settle whether the cause is real.

There is no single right answer here about how strong a causal chain or a causal claim is. What the course settles is the test: a correlation by itself does not show a cause, and a slippery slope is a fallacy only when its links lack support. Pick the option you actually care about, and make your case.

Expectations

Activity format: one initial post followed by two substantive peer replies. Plan on about 45 minutes across the two deadlines; your instructor sets both due dates in Canvas.

Your initial post — by the first due date (early in the module week):

• Say which option you chose.
• For Option A, list the objection's links in order, say which link carries the most weight and what evidence would back it, and say whether the chain is a reasonable slope or an unsupported one. For Option B, describe the claim in your own words, name the pattern behind it, run the three rivals, and say what comparison would settle it.
• Say in one sentence where the reasoning is weakest: the link with the least support, or the rival the claim never ruled out.
• Use at least two of this week's terms (correlation, causal claim, confounding factor, reverse causation, coincidence, post hoc, slippery slope, unsupported slippery slope, method of agreement, method of difference, controlled comparison, random assignment) correctly.
• Length: roughly 150–250 words if written. You may instead record your post as audio or video (about two minutes) and attach a transcript; both forms are scored by the same rubric.
• Write from your own reasoning, in your own words, and keep real people's names, election polls, and live political questions out of your examples.

Your replies — by the second due date (the end of the module week):

• Reply substantively to at least two classmates.
• A substantive reply does more than agree: offer the strongest case against a classmate's judgment, name a rival or an unsupported link they missed, or describe a comparison that would settle their question. "Nice post!" on its own does not count.

What a strong post looks like:

I chose Option A. The objection has three links: overnight hours lead to all-night studying, all-night studying means lost sleep, and lost sleep hurts exam performance. The first link carries the most weight, and nothing in the objection backs it; students who would stay up anyway might do it somewhere less safe. So I read the chain as partly supported at best. What would settle it is a comparison of how late students study in weeks the library is open overnight and weeks it is not.

Notice how it separates the links, says which one needs evidence, and judges the chain without taking a side on the library. That is the bar.

Participation rubric

This discussion is worth 10 points. The three criteria below look at your initial post and your peer replies.

Post early if you can — the best threads happen when people have time to reply before the second due date.

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